


Quantum Immortality

by Euregatto



Category: Code Vein (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Canonical Character Death, Everyone Needs A Hug, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Slow Burn, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, based on the good ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:35:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22274935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euregatto/pseuds/Euregatto
Summary: Louis and the Queenslayer recount memories from their lives because they might never get the chance to again.
Relationships: Aurora Valentino/Karen (Code Vein), Emily Sue/Yakumo Shinonome, Eva Roux/Jack Rutherford, Io & Protagonist (Code Vein), Louis & Cruz Silva, Louis/Protagonist (Code Vein), Protagonist & Jack Rutherford
Comments: 6
Kudos: 62





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> [ On the lips of my love, I'm alone again / Bleed slow, I can taste where your love has been / Hold your heart in my teeth, I could break the skin / Pull me close, you can feel where my love begins / (You've got your own price, it's in your bloodline) ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo9pUiLMkFE)

**Currently**

A flame snaps to life in the dark.

Louis glances over the top of the book he’s been attempting to read for a better part of the last hour and sees the Queenslayer pacing furiously towards the patio with a lit cigarette clenched between her teeth. Her hands are shaking and it’s only midnight.

He knows better than to say anything if he doesn't have to. She comes to him first, usually—a creature of emotional solitude, reminding him of the way a spider folds itself into a hole, away from the light. Louis knows she’ll emerge for him one way or another. Never by his choice, but he doesn’t want to risk losing his friend by pressing on all the wrong nerves, so he reads his book and drinks the tea Mia made him and _waits_.

* * *

Another hour passes and she’s back in the foyer, blood veil clasped around her shoulders and Burning Disaster held in a vice-like grip. It’s become hard to be near her. Be her, he imagines. When she’s furious that the sun lights the sky, that blood flows beneath her skin, that Io is gone. Nothing sedates her hunger but killing. A reckless, confused momentum of energy against inevitability.

This time, he puts the book down, and says something.

“You’re not going by yourself.”

She isn’t looking at him. “I wasn’t aware this was open to debate.”

“It’s not.”

“Then why do you feel compelled to bother me?”

Louis gets up and brushes past her to retrieve his blood veil from one of Murasame’s armor racks. “Is that what I’m doing?” he says, feigning ignorance.

“I’m not going far.”

“How coincidental. Neither am I.”

She’s glaring at him now, but he’s perfected keeping just enough of a distance both physically and emotionally that the fact she hasn’t shot him yet is confirmation of his effectiveness. “I’m going _alone_ ,” she hisses at him. “I feel like I can’t breathe in here.”

“It’s quite stuffy,” he agrees.

She grits her teeth and goes for the door. He suits up and follows her out a few minutes later, finding her waiting for him at the bottom of the steps, smoking a cigarette.

“Where to?” he asks.

“Doesn’t matter,” she says. “Need to find another pack, though. I’m down to my last half.”

“Maybe you should cut back.”

She gives him a look. “You’re _infuriating_ , you know that? Absolutely _impossible_. Io would never—” Something thick passes through the air between them. Louis reaches out, placing his hand on her shoulder. He suspects it doesn’t bring her any comfort. “I need to walk.”

“Lead the way.”

They trek along the centerfold of the uptown metropolis area for several hours, beheading Lost and tossing aside rubble in the search for military drops. Eventually they happen upon an overturned crate in the crevice of a road, knocked out the back of the flipped truck from years ago; Louis stands guard as she rifles through the contents, producing a carton of _silvers_ , as she calls them. _Better than nothing. An absolute jackpot._

“Cigarettes were supplied to suppress hunger,” she says to him later, when they’re at the edge of a fault, half a dozen stories above what used to be a condominium complex. “But that was back before everything went to shit, when _food_ was what sustained a soldier. My unit shared smokes around for the normalcy of it.”

Louis says, “How does that old excuse go?”

She laughs, and removes her mask. Here, the miasma is thin. “It’s, _I can quit any time I want to_.”

“Is that true?”

“Of course not, I’m addicted.”

The sky is a wasteland of stars and the flame she lights is a harsh contrast of orange against the backdrop of midnight blue. Louis watches the tip of her cigarette burn intensely, the way a Revenant fades when killed—hot, bright, and then ash in the wind.

“I miss her.”

Louis looks at the Queenslayer, and tries not to pity her. “I know, but—Rheagan, please listen to me. What’s done is done. Io wouldn’t want you to mope around like this. She sacrificed herself for _you_.”

“I didn’t fucking ask her to!”

Louis winces. Rheagan is looking away from him, burying her face in her hands while the cigarette burns slow and purposefully between two fingers. They’re at the edge of night. The ends of her blood veil lift and fall in the wind. He becomes acutely aware of the distance between them, and how far away she feels—he knows, logically, that she’s only out of arm’s reach, but quite impossibly, he doesn’t know how long it’ll take to reach her if he tries.

“You were there, through it all,” she says quietly. “You know it should have been me.”

“No, I don’t know that.”

“Louis—”

“It was a _gamble_ ,” he says firmly. “There was a chance the Queen could have come back, there was a chance you’d reject the relics and frenzy, there was a chance we failed, and a chance we succeeded.” He narrows his gaze. _“Chances_ , Rheagan.”

“I—” She takes another drag and exhales, shaking. “Will it ever leave me? This pain?”

“No,” he says honestly. “It will only get easier to deal with. Just not soon, and not all at once.”

She finishes her cigarette in silence and flicks it over the edge of the platform. “I want to go home, Louis.”

He closes the distance between them, putting his arm around her shoulders. It doesn’t take nearly as long as it should have.

“Then let’s go home.”

* * *

They're sitting at the bar, the only ones awake and still donned in their veils despite the venture lingering two hours behind them, splitting a bottle of Bull's Horns Bourbon from Yakumo's supposedly secret stash. Rheagan looks at the polished counter top and takes a drink. The tumbler clinks against the marbled wood. Her reflection is tired; there are depressions under her eyes, which mimic the color of the sky when a thunderstorm has rolled in to shed the weight of its water, and her dark hair, though braided back to keep it away from sharp blades and tangling lines, has come loose. The surface reflects everyone in their truth and has seen everything, bore witness, in fact, to every combination of emotional transition.

“What are you thinking about?” Louis asks, quietly.

“I'm elsewhere,” she answers, "in another time. I brought up my old squad and now I can't stop replaying in my mind where they might be, or if they remember me.”

“Will talking help?”

She shrugs. “I don't know.”

“Will it distract you?”

“Probably.”

Louis leans forward, propping his elbows up on the counter, deciding that this is what he'll do to keep her mind off Io. Except, he hates drinking. Alcohol tastes awful, and Revenants can still get drunk, get addicted, get angry in their withdrawal, but he finds that it goes down easier with each intake. 

“You can start anytime. Or not at all. If you'd prefer, we can just sit here until you feel better.”

Rheagan gazes up at the ceiling, focusing on the sensation of living a time long ago. She takes a deep breath. Closes her eyes.

 _And remembers_. . .


	2. Luca

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Memories of: a Self-Important Revenant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: creative liberties were taken in this chapter and every chapter following, so there's a greater passage of time during certain events that were only really glossed over in the game, or implied to have happened over the course of mere days extended out to weeks or months. Characters are also going to be fleshed out in a similar fashion. I'll try to maintain what's supplied in the source material as far as personalities and histories go, but certain changes are going to be made to add layers.
> 
> I hope you enjoy all the same.

**4 Years Ago**

**Provisional Government Warfront**

**Operation Queenslayer Phase III: Day 1**

A flame snaps to life in the dark.

Rheagan takes a drag of her cigarette and blows smoke, pointedly, in the direction of the Revenant who’s been watching her for the better part of half an hour. The unit isn’t equipped to reengage their target yet, so they stand idly in anticipation, some of them still recovering from being jarred back to life, the rest pacing the military grounds, itching for combat. Rheagan recalls the moment the Queen speared a thorn through her chest and killed her all over again. A moment of bright, intense heat. The sickening crunch of bones caving beneath the brutal force of it.

Her fingers twitch.

She taps out her ashes.

“Like what you see?” she asks, more of a fact than a question. She isn’t typically this standoffish with anyone, especially not a soldier she’s about to go to war with, but she can’t judge his expression behind his mask and it’s starting to piss her off.

“You look familiar,” the Revenant admits. He puts a hand against the back of his head as if he’d forgotten something important. His fingers sift through hair that’s dark at its roots and blazing red at the ends, a transitive display of will, she thinks, that it isn’t all one color. “Didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, I was just trying to remember.”

“Do you remember your name, at least?”

He hesitates, as if deciding whether to answer, or maybe he really doesn’t know—then says, “Luca.”

“Luca. I’m Rheagan.”

“Care if I join you for a smoke, Rheagan?”

She shrugs, fishing her pack out of her pocket as he closes the distance between them. His mask comes off; ungentle eyes gaze back at her from behind a filament of pale blue. The cigarette slides easily between his forehead and thumb. He’s a creature of habit, she decides—someone who moves autonomously, tethered to existence entirely by desire.

“Light?”

She takes out her book of matches and strikes one for him. He ignites the end of his stick on her flame. Pulls in the flame. Breathes deep. Their proximity becomes an intimacy two strangers can only find at the brink of death, sharing—(in the future: tongues, teeth, blood, chocolate)—apprehensive looks.

Rheagan flicks the match away and Luca withdraws, opting to stand at the corner of the shadows cast down from the makeshift weapons hangar. They smoke in silence. In the distance, a Lost howls into the air, perhaps triumphant, perhaps dying. Across the campgrounds, two of their squad members engage in a game of chess with provisional crates serving as a table set.

“The Captain,” Luca says, startling Rheagan out of her thoughts, “that guy there”—he gestures to their squad leader, who stands at the maw of the provisional hospital beside Gregorio Silva, looking like he has a bone to pick with everyone—“has been talking about you all morning, like you’re some kind of herald. You really wounded the Queen?”

“Possibly.” She takes a long drag, exhales. “At this point they could be mistaking me for someone else, but it wouldn’t make a difference. We’re going to keep being revived and deployed until either she dies, or we all do.”

“Hmph. Guess you’ve got a point.”

The sunlight struggles through the clouds, casting everything in a soft yolk-colored haze. Their captain stands out—a man of silver juxtaposed against pale gold. Everything else is glossed over by shadow. Rheagan realizes she must be from around here because she hates the look of the clouds when they’re swollen with rain, hates the damp feel of it. If not here, then at least somewhere in the general vicinity of _the_ _north_ ; she thinks details like that are important. Worth remembering. And still, she hates the anticipation of incoming storms.

“I'll be honest. We're teammates now, so I can afford be honest: I’m a bit jealous.”

She glimpses at Luca from the corner of her eye. “What?”

“To be on Jack’s team is an honor, like a medal. It means you’ve been _recognized_. For your skill, mostly, and I suspect your body count, but I’ve never—none of us have ever been given the same opportunity.” He grins at her, and though she suspects it isn’t meant to be malicious, she’s never been fond of people with expressions that never quite reach their eyes. “Just. _Wow_. Jack Rutherford’s _partner_. You really must be someone special.”

“Sure,” she utters, taking another long drag to delay her reply. “Special. _Right_.”

The clouds above them tumble across the sky. The last of the sunlight is suffocated lovingly to death. Rheagan flicks her dying cigarette into a crevice in the road and steps backwards, under the sloping roof of the hangar, where Jack can’t see her. Luca crushes his own stick beneath the heel of his combat boot.

“And to answer your question,” he says, “yeah, I _do_ like what I see. Quite a lot.”

* * *

**Currently**

“Were you two together?” Louis asks, snapping Rheagan back into the present. “If you don’t mind my asking. It’s just that…the way you talk about him, and the memory—”

“I don’t know,” she says. A thought lifts to the surface of her mind, close enough to be a scent. Soft flesh under her nails, his tongue on her nipple, legs twisted in a threadbare blanket that smells like smoke and wool and blood. “It was a long time ago. Why does it matter, anyway? Jealous?”

Louis laughs softly. “I don’t get jealous.”

 _“Sure_ you don’t. Besides.” She gestures to herself as if displaying modern artwork to a potential buyer. “Who _wouldn’t_ want a piece of this train wreck? Luca was certainly into it.”

“Ah, so you _were_ together.”

Rheagan’s smile falters. She pours herself another half-glass and chokes it down before finally answering him with, “Yeah, I guess you can call it that.”

“What would you call it then, if not that?”

“It was a physical intimacy, nothing but a distraction.” At some point, she’s wrapped her fingers around the cut crystal that’s been hanging from her neck since the day she first regained consciousness in the ruined city. The chain is cold and weighted. She remembers the sting of it falling against her chest for the first time and trembles. “That's all you need, sometimes. Something you can put a stop to before it becomes claustrophobic.” 

Louis gives her a knowing look. “Was he good to you?”

“He was, even if he had a habit of being…” Rheagan considers the idea of him, turning it over and over and over again through her mind. “Self-important.”

“I see. What happened to the both of you?”

Rheagan lights a cigarette. She takes a long drag, and slowly, leans against the back of her stool.

* * *

**4 Years Ago**

**Provisional Government Outskirts**

**Operation Queenslayer Phase III: Day 14**

The Lost’s head tumbles from its shoulders. Rheagan spins into the momentum of her swing and launches her sword through the chest of another Lost ambling towards Jack, spearing it straight through its heart and reducing it to ash. Jack’s curved blade tears easily into the chest cavity of his own opponent. Without losing her rush, Rheagan collects her sword from the ground and presses her back to his, taking note of the horde beginning to converge on them from all sides.

“Protect your heart, kid,” Jack says, drawing into an offensive stance. “Don’t get cocky, watch your wounds.”

Rheagan lunges forward and slices through the nearest Lost. Ash fills her vision. Blood rushes in her ears. She parries their strikes, tears into their ranks, feels the impact of blade-on-flesh softened by her gloves. Despite her skill, despite her momentum propelling her against the army, they’ve been at this for days and she feels it in the dullness of her sword, the ache in her ribs, the creeping thirst in the back of her throat.

For a brief moment, a flicker of time between two heartbeats, she considers it easier to let them kill her.

A gunshot rings off from the other end of the crowd. She recognizes Luca’s voice, shouting above the chaos, his words incoherent over the sound of her blade tearing into flesh. For entire minutes they eradicate the Lost, hacking off limbs and heads, piercing hearts and lungs and brains. Rheagan feels space freeing up around her as their unit takes every creature down one-by-one, systematically, effortlessly—truly the skilled soldiers of Jack’s team, worth every ration and provision.

But then, over the horror of the battle, she hears: “Luca’s down!”

Followed by: “Oh, shit! Jacob!” and a burst of ash high above the crowd.

Rheagan’s stomach fills with concrete. She takes a deep breath and launches into the heart of the Lost’s ranks, slicing through torsos, legs, chests. Feeling their claws glancing off her veil. Hearing the collision of blades, of bones. The first rule of combat is to never let them surround you. She can’t focus on Gregorio’s words when her sword tears so wonderfully through layers of corroded flesh.

Within minutes, the Lost are at half their number, and from there, the cleanup is quick and easy. Jack disperses the final Lost with an executioner’s-styled swing, cleaving the monster in twain from its neck to the base of its hip, and Rheagan staggers as it dies, as if mirroring its pain. In actuality she’s fatigued, but the acute recollection of _Luca_ starts her mind awake. After nearly a full minute to collect herself, heart throwing itself wildly against the cage of her chest, her partner’s own heightened breathing like a cacophony of noise in her ears, only silence fills the place that had once been swarming with a horde of fallen comrades and beasts.

She sprints across the battlefield, counts off four members, the rest dead—one for good, as she’ll learn later—and finds Luca struggling to his feet, a nasty gash lancing his stomach open. The flesh has knitted itself closed for the most part, though the blood seeps through the spaces between his fingers when he moves too subtly.

“Luca,” she tries, “oh, Luca. Are you okay?”

“Of course! The bastard got me from my blind spot. Worried about me, are ya?”

She narrows her eyes and says to him, utilizing a tone that doesn't give anything away, “The less soldiers we have the more difficult our battle gets. Call it tactical concern.”

“Sure, we'll call it that.” He leans on his bayonet for support. “You know what I think?”

“I don’t want to, but you’ll inevitably tell me.”

“You’re incredibly sexy when you’re tearin' heads off the Lost.”

Rheagan feels heat spread across her face like roots in the dirt and silently thanks Gregorio for his incredible mask designs. “Whatever,” she mutters, jabbing him under his ribs with her fist. “Don’t be so reckless with your life.”

“Ow, mercy! _Mercy.”_

Jack approaches their unit, assessing the damage to their ranks with the same quick glance of his eyes that’d Rheagan had done, and says to them, “I want the rest of you to take the eastern roads and clear the back paths for the next wave of troops. We’re going straight through. Kid, let’s move.”

“Yes, Captain.”

He treks away from them, crossing the expanse of the battlefield towards their destination. Rheagan bottles up her exhaustion and begins to follow when Luca reaches out, catching her hand in his own, more bloodied one.

“Wait, take this.” He unclasps his necklace and maneuvers it out from under his blood veil, pooling it into her palm. “I’ve had this thing forever. At this point, it's got to be good luck, right? You can wear it, but you have to give it back when I see you again.”

“I shouldn’t, if it’s important to you.”

“You’re more important. This just means you’ll have to come back to me.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll wear your stupid—” For once, when she looks at him, she thinks she can decipher his concealed expression. One of anticipation, one of hope. She sighs, splaying her hand over his cheek. “I’ll bring it back.”

“Will you kiss me?”

She scoffs. “If either of our masks come off, we’ll _turn_.”

“Worth a shot. Well, when you come back—you’ll kiss me then.”

“Okay,” she says. “I will. Of course I will.”

She turns and regroups with Jack. The necklace grows cold in the palm of her hand.

* * *

**Currently**

The sun is coming up. Its light spears through the stain glass windows and falls over everything, blanketing it in a soft glow that feels holier, less introverted than the overcast days during Operation Queenslayer.

Louis says, “You didn’t make it back to him.”

Rheagan shrugs, crushing the remainder of her cigarette in the ashtray. “That’s the reality of our war, isn’t it? We convince ourselves that the heaviest burden we’ll have to bear is our own humanity.”

“Would you like to see him again?”

“There’s no point. It was a long time ago.”

“Shit,” says a ragged voice from behind them, “is that Bull’s Horn? That’s the good stuff.”

Rheagan swerves around to see Jack, who’s still gathering himself together this early into the day; he tucks his undershirt into the waistline of his jeans while she tucks the bottle behind her back.

“Good morning,” Louis says politely.

“Don’t tell Yakumo,” Rheagan says over him.

Jack passively wafts his hand. “Not my fire to stoke.”

“How long were you listening?” Rheagan asks, replacing the bourbon on the countertop.

“You mean your story? It’s important to relive the past, to cherish those memories you once lost so easily. It’s not my place to make those my own.” Jack rolls his shoulders, fixes his bangs with sharp, accurate fingers. “Besides, I remember those days with clarity. No need to hear it from any other point of view.”

“Right…”

“But what I will say,” he continues, “is that you two need to get it together. We've got company today, remember?”

“We didn't forget,” Louis says.

Rheagan gives him a sideways glance. “We didn't?”

Jack wordlessly leaves them at the bar and disappears back down the hall, retracing his silent steps. Louis gets up a moment later. “I'm going to attempt to gather my notes before Karen gets here,” he says, gesturing to his desk. “Will you do me a favor and wake everyone else? After you hide that bottle back in the cellar, of course.” 

“Yeah, I can do that.”

Rheagan watches him go and then gazes into the bottom of her glass. In the distorted reflection that looks back up at her, she wonders if Luca had been like this too, after losing her, wholly different but emotionally parallel to how she lost Io. Drowning in the self-pity, the undistinguished guilt. Or if he had died the time he forgot her with her name on his lips, another precious memory shed out of reckless abandon to ease the pain of revival; or if she'd been forgotten on purpose, nothing more than another passage of time to give adverse weight to all the other precious moments deemed more important and less powerful than she could have ever been.


End file.
